


Just Let The Zombies Win

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Background Femslash, Coffee Shops, DGHDA Big Bang and Beginner Bang, Dirk Gently wants to do one thing without the universe getting involved, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, F/F, Farah Black is Done, Gen, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Slash, Slice of Life, Team Bonding, Team Building Day, Todd Brotzman has no cool or chill, Work Outing, escape room, no zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 16:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20195263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: 'Left unattended by the universe and with an actual (poorly) paid team, Dirk got ideas. Dirk Googled. And Dirk booked Team Building Exercises.'Buoyed by the existence of the Agency and a desire to Solve Cases Without Universal Involvement, Dirk has decided the Agency will now be participating in an escape room. In theory this will strengthen their bonds as a team. In practice they're just getting trapped together in their spare time too.





	Just Let The Zombies Win

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to [not-physically](https://not-physically.tumblr.com/) for their [art ](https://not-physically.tumblr.com/post/186927024839/some-of-the-art-i-did-for-triffidsandcuckooss), [juniper_and_lamplight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniper_and_lamplight/pseuds/juniper_and_lamplight) for cheerleading and being generally incredible and lovely (and performing an 11th hour beta which was the stuff dreams are made of), and [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/works) who not only badgered me into signing up but also badgered me into actually writing it. Absolutely zero thanks to the mobile app which ate three days I did not have spare this week.

"I don't even understand why we're doing this," Todd repeated, as if that had any bearing on anything that happened in his life now. He kept on trying to control his life; his life remained constantly out of his control. "We literally did this last year, and we almost died!"

"Ah, see that's the thing," Dirk said, with his 'I'm being clever' smile that always meant he wasn't actually being clever, and yet things would work out for him anyway. Todd wanted to punch it out of existence – not because he wanted to punch Dirk, he wanted to punch the universe for encouraging him. "This isn't related to a case, so the chances of things taking a turn for the killy are completely null and void."

Todd raised his eyebrows at him, not looking but fairly certain that next to him Farah had the exact same expression.

"Well, only about ten percent."

Neither of them moved.

"Fine, maybe twenty-five, _but_ that is a _huge_ improvement on our usual one hundred percent killy rate. Go team!" Dirk punched his fist in the air with an excited grin, refusing to deflate even when the rest of the agency failed to join in. (To be fair, Dirk was currently wearing Mona so Todd supposed she might also be raising her hand.)

Farah sighed. "I do like the idea of nobody killing us." 

Appalled, Todd absolutely did not screech, "Don't encourage him!"

"I'm not." Her lips pursed slightly, her face making that expression Todd was fairly certain she did instead of shrugging. "I canvassed the place already, and did a background check on everyone there. It's normal. Really normal. For a voluntary dungeon."

"Voluntary _puzzle_ dungeon," Dirk clarified. "And you see? If Farah's checked into it then our chances of a killy scenario have been _massively_ reduced."

"If you say 'go team' again," Todd said hastily, as Dirk's mouth did not close and he started to reach up once more, "I am leaving right this second." Dirk pouted, but that was a small price to pay to avoid another set of intense cheerleading flashbacks. (Not that Todd had been a cheerleader. There had been misunderstandings, and a thing with Krispy Kreme that he really didn't want to get into, even in his own inner monologue.) Unfortunately, Dirk then went in the opposite direction and started drawing in on himself and now Todd felt like the worst person ever. So that much was normal and horrible.

"I...suppose it's worth a look?" he hazarded, and Dirk's smile was almost bright enough to block out his sense of impending doom. Almost.

\---

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was now a place that existed, physically and online and most incredibly not just in Dirk’s ramblings. Neither Todd nor Farah actually minded the name, despite what they might say, because it had a nice way of suggesting to clients that any ensuing mess was somehow entirely Dirk’s fault. That wasn’t even a lie – it just meant that rather than trying to explain the unknowable workings of the universe they instead just relied on kneejerk assumptions. 

The drawback to having Dirk’s name on the board was that made it that frustrating little bit harder to argue that he wasn’t in charge. Everybody knew to turn to Farah when things actually went wrong, that went without saying, but in everyday situations they were all at the whim of a bored Dirk and that turned out to be worse than a Dirk beset by cases. At least on cases nothing was normal and so nobody (Dirk) felt the urge to pretend to be normal, regardless of actual feelings on the subject. 

Left unattended by the universe and with an actual (poorly) paid team, Dirk got ideas. Dirk Googled. And Dirk booked Team Building Exercises.

Which was why the agency (all four of them) were now stood in line in a chain coffee shop, Dirk full of excitement at being so normal, Todd wanting to die, Farah seeming calm except for how nobody would go within a foot of her.

“It’s so _pink_,” Dirk said in awe, gazing with wide anime eyes at the fluorescent poster by the extortionate price list, with its cavorting unicorns and bunnies around some kind of gigantic trophy of coffee and whipped cream, “and it’s not even alcoholic.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Farah said, steely gaze glued to the barista cowering by the coffee machine. “There’s enough sugar in those things to stop a horse.”

“_Really_?” Dirk asked, fascinated. “How? Is there a sugar paddock? No,” he went on, “don’t tell me. Sugar stables? Sugar horseshoes. I’m thinking a really big wall – ”

“She means when it’s in your body,” Todd interrupted. “It doesn’t literally physically stop a horse.”

“I know what I meant,” Farah muttered to herself.

At this point the poor unsuspecting woman on the till asked, "And what can I help you with, sir?"

"The Unicorn Frappuccino Glitter Fairyland Princess Deluxe," Dirk said, in the same voice he reserved for Extremely Important Case Things (the capitals thing was catching), "what's in that, exactly?"

Todd didn't miss the way the woman’s smile froze slightly, her eyes darting first to her colleague (still intent on not ruining Farah's Americano), to the poster, to Dirk, and then more furtively to a point just under the till where Todd could only assume there was some sort of official document with a lot of red font. "Ice cream," she said eventually. "Three shots of coffee." 

Then, in the flurry of someone willing to risk being fired to save another human being, "Strawberry syrup, raspberry syrup, vanilla syrup, glitter syrup, sherbet, jelly beans, Skittles™, Lucky Charms™, Fluff™, whipped cream, Whipped Cream X (R), Super Whipped Cream (R), phosphorus, oxygen, iodine, sulfur, more oxygen with added nitrogen, ruthenium, some extra nitrogen, water, citrus, pink drizzle, umber drizzle, sunset drizzle, magenta drizzle, fuchsia drizzle, and milk.”

Both Todd's and Dirk's eyes grew steadily wider as the list went on, although Todd suspected not for the same reasons. Farah looked like she was playing on her phone, which given it was Farah probably meant she was recording all this in case they ever needed to blackmail a CEO or create an alternative to battery acid.

The woman reached the end of her spiel with the breathless relief of the recently confessed and looked at them, something very wild in her face.

"Well, sold, _obviously_," Dirk said.

\---

Admittedly, Dirk Gently in the midst of a sugar high didn't act all that differently from Dirk Gently most of the time. Still, Todd was watching the (for lack of a better word) pink swill attempting to move through the straw whilst reflecting on just how long the three of them (technically four of them) would be trapped in a room together. _Voluntarily._

Dirk had been very excited by the idea of "actual detecting," trying to escape a room when, as he saw it, the universe had absolutely no interest in whether or not he got out and therefore would not provide any lucky coincidences to help him. In fact he had gone out of his way apparently to select this escape room rather than the bigger one literally two streets away, because that one had had a bunch of signs saying things like ‘everything is connected’ and the whole point was “a nice, coincidence-free day”. Todd couldn't help but think that those coincidences helped _them_ quite a lot, and it wasn't something he was entirely happy with attempting to avoid. However, as a mere Assistant in the Agency (as Dirk had told him, rather loftily for someone who’d only heard about employee contracts yesterday) Todd could offer suggestions without any ultimate authority in the decision-making process. 

Todd thought about this as he watched the decision-making process guzzle enough sugar and chemicals to thoroughly block the passage of an entire stampede of metaphorical horses.

\---

"Party of...Gently?" the teenager behind the counter read off, blessed with the ability to make every single word she uttered sound sarcastic. Even the 'of' sounded disgusted. Todd loved her instantly. "The...‘detective agency’?"

"Yes," Dirk said in a very serious voice, slightly undermined by the scattered drops of gloopy pink substance on his jacket from his attempts to pass on the experience of consuming it to Mona. "That is us. We are the Detective Agency." Even with that much sugar in his system, Todd noticed he could still talk in capitals. "We," he added with a very smug smile, "are on a Team Building Day."

She looked at him in a way Todd hadn't been able to since high school. Amanda could still nail it though, so it could just be a girl thing. "...Okay," she said eventually. "Good for you…guy." Then she pointed at what could very loosely be called a milkshake, her painted and embossed fingernail clearly the benefit of more engagement and drive than her entire job. "No food or drink allowed in there."

Dirk's eyes narrowed as he leant against the counter. Todd really hoped he wasn’t going to be clever. They’d all had enough of that today already. "Ah, but technically this is both a food _and_ a drink," he told her. "Multiple foods, still technically."

In a not at all shocking twist to anyone (except Dirk), she seemed utterly unmoved by this display of logic. "You can't take it in there," she said, her affected boredom almost but not quite covering the satisfaction of enforcing an arbitrary rule because you could rather than because you actually cared. Todd sympathised. 

Still, now Dirk was pouting, so Todd had to abandon his shitty employee solidarity and hastily step up. "It's fine, he'll finish it first.” Feeling the sudden need to prove they weren’t assholes, he angled his head to try to make out her name badge. “Becky?” 

Becky looked thoroughly unimpressed by his ability to read her name. Belatedly Todd remembered that he actually hated people who said his name more. She granted him one raised pierced eyebrow, more devastating than any comment, then sat back in her chair and stopped perceiving them as human beings.

"Dirk," Todd said seriously, holding him by the shoulders to impress on him how serious this was, "I need you to either finish that or throw it away."

"That seems an awful waste."

"So finish it so we can get voluntarily trapped and then hopefully voluntarily freed too."

Dirk frowned. "As in we might not want to get out?"

"Just...drink it, already."

Todd still wasn't sure why they'd even let him get the thing. Obviously Dirk was a grown adult but he made choices like, well, someone who knew most of their choices were only illusions, so he had all the awareness of consequences of a five year old. One rainbow poster and here they were.

Becky did not mention the fact that Dirk was practically vibrating now, more from not caring than politeness, given the way she didn’t sound even remotely bothered or even any different to before the sugar consumption. Weren’t teenagers supposed to (Todd flailed for a moment with the complex mental gymnastics of not sounding his age because that was his age obviously) Instagram or something? 

It was only when Dirk triumphantly slammed down his cup, like this was a Wild West tavern more than a Terrible Idea, that she re-engaged and said, “You didn’t have to rush, you know. Nobody comes in here.”

"Right," Dirk said, nodding much longer than he had to, "now – quick question before we get going – would you say that nobody _ever_ comes here, in like a spooky haunted mansion way?"

Becky looked at Farah, then Todd. Todd didn't know how Farah reacted, but all he could offer was the same shrug he gave everyone in Dirk’s orbit.

"No," she said slowly, "just like, it's an escape room, you know? Sometimes people remember that there are way better things to do with your life."

Briefly Todd wondered what she'd suggest, before he remembered being that age and how weed was a thing that existed.

"Ah, so nothing unusual about it?"

"It's really fucking boring."

Farah made a sound like she was appalled by the use of strong language in a professional environment. Dirk beamed.

"That's all right, then. Now, what are your options? And if we're _very_ fast, can the answer be 'all of them'?"

She shrugged. "Knock yourself out. We've got Egypt, horror, Dan Brown crap, zombies, unicorns, robots, a bunch of fantasy ripoffs where it’s just embarrassing how much we’re trying not to get sued – you’ve got your pick of about twenty, I reckon. Some have multiple rooms, too, if that's your thing."

"It's – It's an escape _room_, why would there be multiple – wait, how many did you say you have?" Farah seemed to be having the same problem she often did around Dirk, or more accurately the universe around Dirk, where she had too many questions to actually be able to follow them or even the answers. Not that Todd didn't sympathise, it was just that, well, Farah was a lot better at the case end of things, while Todd's whole bit was just filtering out the weird-but-manageable from the constant onslaught of weird-and-lethal. (Tidal wave? Riptide? He knew you filtered water. Or liquids generally. Home ec would have been pretty good to know but didn't fit the image he was going for, or the people for that matter.)

"I guess it's bigger on the inside?" Todd suggested, as if any reference wouldn't go flying over Dirk and Farah's heads. (Dirk because of the early years' incarceration and the later years of being Dirk; Farah because it didn't sound like her TV growing up had ever shown anything not cop-related and maybe the abuse of a police box would have bothered her.) Sure enough, nobody noticed – nobody, that was, except Becky, who managed to keep her deadeyed disinterest while making it clear he was the least significant person in the universe. (Speaking of high school flashbacks, in that moment she reminded him of any number of crushes, but particularly the head jock who'd sneered at Todd once and left him reeling for the rest of the week.) 

Becky shrugged, possibly not even as a reaction so much as a state of being. "I dunno, man, I just work here."

"That – " Farah looked like her brain might be short-circuiting a bit, "that literally means that you – "

It wasn't often Todd got to save Farah, for the simple but pretty big reason that she was a badass and therefore generally saved him (if he was lucky). He definitely wasn't going to be thinking about this later, extensively. "No, I get that," he said, his big hero moment accompanied by a rise in volume but hopefully not pitch. "So, we can choose any of them? They’re all free?”

"Horror’s closed," she said, which wasn't entirely an answer but seemed more important to her, as far as anything was actually 'important' to her and not just a distraction from contemplating the eternal boredom of the universe. (God, Todd missed thinking the universe was boring.) "You think I want to put on the costume in this heat."

Despite the complete lack of a question mark, and the sort of flashing warning signs you'd see in a nuclear meltdown, Dirk still went for it. That was the kind of person Dirk was. At least Todd didn't have to worry too much about filling awkward silences. (And God knew they had enough awkwardness between them to stay mute for basically ever.) "What kind of costume is it?"

"Why, you wanna see." It was quite clear that Dirk did not want to see. If Dirk saw, she would remove his eyeballs. Once again Todd had the idea that Dirk had completely skipped being a teenager hammered into his skull. Either that or he just didn't care about the subtitles.

"Oh no," he said, and Todd exhaled, "I don't think so, horror's not really my thing, sorry. Good thing, though, isn't it? Since it's not open?" And he smiled his rainbow smile, sufficiently happy and unconcerned that even Becky looked a little non-plussed (which on her was quite a lot of emotion indeed). "Anyway, about the multiple rooms thing: I don't have the best experience personally with endless corridors full of traps. What would you say is the percentage chance of death for your selection? And if you could rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of speed, 1 being your standard blink and you miss it and 10 being hours and hours of screaming agony, that would be very helpful."

He smiled. Becky looked at him.

"Like. Zero?"

"Is that the percentage or the rating?"

"You're a really weird dude."

"Why thank you very much," Dirk said, and he seemed actually sincere about it. "I haven't known you very long but I'm sure you're very weird too."  
“Just one room,” Farah cut in, as Becky went a very interesting shade of white you didn’t usually see without special effects. “I – zombies. Why not?” She stretched out her hands with a wild stab at sounding casual which didn’t even graze it.

“Oh,” Dirk said. “That’s not much.”

“You know what?” Becky said slowly. It was the way of talking which made Todd suddenly remember, ‘do you want the premium service’. “Just for you, I won’t put a time limit on. You can stay in there as long as you like, ‘til you solve it.”

Todd opened his mouth. So did Farah. They weren’t fast enough.

“_Thank_ you,” Dirk said with a grin. “It has been a genuine pleasure talking to you.”

\---

“You know, you're not supposed to call people weird," Todd said as they waited in the corridor. His feet were sticking to the floor, not in any specific way, just a communal place way.

"People call me weird all the time," Dirk pointed out, not inaccurately. "And I'm fairly certain they're right, at least in their experience. Sometimes I worry I'm not weird enough, and then I talk to people and they reassure me that I am." He pursed his lips. "I suppose it's sort of like Pride? You're fairly certain you're gay only you think maybe you're not gay enough, and then you have a whole lot of people yelling it. I don't think they throw things at straight people – not for being straight, in any case."

Todd was very aware he should say something, _anything_, because this was getting distressing even for a train of thought from someone raised by actual evil scientists. (It turned out that was not cool in the slightest and Todd still felt pangs of guilt for ever thinking it when watching TV, although really that's not that big a deal because Todd's whole existence these days is guilt and pangs aren't that bad next to fucking bullet holes). Part of Todd’s brain was doing the thing where it just hit a giant button that said 'PROTECT', the one that only Amanda should have access to but Dirk hijacked and rewired without Todd looking; part was just punch drunk from all the words when it really wasn't that complicated a comment; part was just repeating 'how gay' over and over like Jack Nicholson with a pretty different obsession (unless Todd was remembering that film wrong, it had gotten pretty weird and it seemed cooler to argue that it wasn't that great anyway).

Fortunately, while Farah could get a little more stunned, she had one less thing to deal with (at least, assuming she didn't want to sleep with Dirk, which was honestly so weird an image that Todd could feel it killing a boner he didn't even have). "They don't, Dirk, but that's not the point. You have to...let people decide they're weird."

"Ah," Dirk said, as if Farah had delivered a vital clue. "Not imposing weirdness on them. Of course."

Farah caught Todd’s eye over Dirk's shoulder and firmly shook her head.

A light overhead abruptly flashed bright green, with a loud groan which might have once been a beep before age and distinterest ground it into defeat. Spotlights flashed on – or, more accurately, the kind of lights you could pick up pretty much anywhere to make your garden more obnoxious at night. Some other things happened too – distant clunking, spooky noises – only Todd didn't have the brain space available for sarcastic comments about them (at least not consciously, his brain could be sarcastic even when knocked out without really being heard by anything or anyone else), because his entire frontal lobe was focused on the way Dirk had gone very still and very pale, limbs rigid and looking like he'd very much like to shrink back against the wall and hide if only he could make himself move.

"Dirk?" Todd said. "Dirk. It's fine, it's just some lame light show. It's nothing."

Dirk's eyes swivelled to look at him incredulously.

"He's right," Farah said. "They're just going for an atmosphere thing."

As if on cue, a high whine pierced the air, making Todd and Farah wince and Dirk twitch. There was a cough, then an extremely disgusted voice said, "So, like, there are zombies or something. Woo." Never before had the word 'woo' been said with less vim and vigour, and Todd could say that with some respect. "They're invading or something. Some _28 Days Later_ rip-off bullshit. You know that movie completely ruined zombies? Fucking hacks."

On the plus side, with every (ironically) dead syllable, Dirk seemed to relax a little – even more so once he'd closed his eyes. At a loss for anything else to do, Todd carefully patted him on the shoulder, only realising a moment later that Farah was doing the exact same thing on the other side.

"So yeah, door right there, you got a lab, I guess. You think you can handle doors?"

"Yes?" Dirk said to the ceiling. Todd sighed.

"So go through, figure out a cure for zombies, like we'd even stand a chance when they want to eat our brains. Can't fucking wait."

Another whine, then both the bored voice and the very hoarse siren cut out. After a pause, the normal lights flicked on again out of sheer embarrassment. Todd could see cobwebs and he honestly couldn't say whether they were ambiance or shitty housekeeping.

\---

“They weren’t kidding about no phone signal.”

“Todd, five seconds seems a little premature to try to Google anything.”

“Just checking exactly how trapped we are. Voluntarily.”

Todd wouldn't say he was some sort of expert on zombie science labs (as in labs for the science of zombies, not zombie scientists' labs, which was the sort of thing you found yourself correcting even in your thoughts like Dirk could just tell there was potential for misunderstandings even in your thoughts), since honestly he was pretty over the whole zombie thing now and had been for a while. Still, if the undead did start shuffling or running or...metaphoring their way out of the grave, he hoped the answer didn't involve anywhere with peeling sticky labels and a wall already featuring a comic sans banner declaring '_welcome to hel_l_l_’. With or without the handwritten l.

"So, did they already lose?" Farah asked. "That seems important information: there could be existent studies, databases, we'd have some knowledge of how the infected develop – "

Dirk poked at something metal. It clunked with the metallic equivalent of a sigh. "This is a toaster."

"Probably," Todd said. 

Three tables stretched out horizontally in front of them, more reminiscent of school science than, well, actual science. They were absolutely covered in junk – themed junk, like microscopes and a rack of test tubes inall sorts of fluorescent colors – and looked more like backstage for a real escape room than, well, one they’d paid to be in.

"Why would we need a toaster?" Dirk frowned, before his face lit up (not quite literally, no matter how Todd's treacherous brain perceived it). "Is it so we can eat?"

"I really don't think – " Todd started to say, at the same time Farah said, "That would actually make – " and then they both fell into the awkward silence of two people simultaneously realising that they’re focusing on the wrong point.

Normally any sort of awkward-off between Todd and Farah could stretch on for, well, however long it took for something else to happen. On the run there'd been the radio; at the agency there was Dirk. Dirk who, on this occasion, might have been about to say something suitably inane and distracting, only then the door made a slamming noise (it had already closed so this was more mysterious than anything else, it just didn't seem likely that the sound was supposed to go with the 'My First Map' poster next to it), a black rectangle by an actual but stopped clock started a bright red digital countdown, and Dirk promptly froze with eyes wider than a Margaret Keane painting. (Todd didn’t used to be able to make that reference and still desperately wished that nobody had ever shown Mona those pictures.)

"Shit," Todd said, for want of anything else to say. Then he lunged, just in case Dirk's limbs were going to just cut out again, although the fact that they didn't ended up less a cause for celebration and more a cause for why Todd found himself with his arms wrapped around Dirk's body.

"Um," Farah said. Todd would have appreciated something else, literally _anything else_, but apparently that was all he was going to get to distract from the fact that he'd just dramatically clamped his arms around Dirk in easily the most aggressive accidental hug he'd ever been involved in.

On the plus side, Todd's utter mortification and desire to vanish into the ground was apparently so bad that it could even snap someone out of their trauma flashbacks, since Dirk was now blinking down at him. "Hello."

Really, it was touch and go as to whether letting go would make it worse. He'd sort of missed his opening to make this look anything like something people could just magically ignore. Then again, now they were just hugging – worse, now _he_ was hugging _Dirk_, in a shitty escape room, with Farah looking at him like he was insane (an expression he really shouldn't be this familiar with).

Dirk cleared his throat. "Is this – not that I'm questioning your methods, obviously, Todd, great enthusiasm, loving the pep – but is this a usual first move in escapes? Not that I'm objecting to new approaches, great work, only usually your first response to being trapped is to start yelling or insulting me, not – but this is nice too!" Dear God. Dirk was patting him. On the head. Like a dog.

Todd let go.

"Okay," Farah said, because she was a beautiful amazing person and really Todd should have just kept trying with her (not that it would have gone anywhere, and judging by her face when she looked at her phone she was a lot more taken these days and stealing people's girlfriends was exactly the sort of behaviour which Past Todd would have indulged in). His current crush was going pretty abysmally, even before you factored in all the very almost dying. "So, it looks like we need four keys – four codes, hidden somewhere in the room," she peered closely at a pile of papers on the table closest to them "and if we input them then the outbreak will be – solved? Somehow?" She made a face. "Honestly, this is not how any sort of zombie outbreak would be tackled, I have no idea where people get ideas like this."

"You mean that hypothetically, right?" Todd asked. "Like, this isn't how they'd deal with any epidemic? Not zombies specifically? Because those aren't a thing, so they wouldn't plan for it, right?"

Farah hummed. "Sure." She did not look at him.

"If it helps, Todd," Dirk said – a phrase which had never once indicated anything which would actually help Todd – "if that did happen, we'd be unlikely to be anywhere like this, all governmental. More likely we'd be running from zombies, away from the locked room."

That sounded very likely. It wasn't entirely Todd's intention for his groan to sound quite so pathetic.

"So how does this start?" Dirk asked with the fervent grin usually seen on cultists. (At least on fictional cultists; Todd now had actual real life experience of what would technically be called a cult – in that 'cult' was literally in their name – and they'd looked less fervent and more confused/blank/murderous.) "Oh!" He raised both pointer fingers. "Do we _gather clues_? Is there _hunting for evidence_?"

Farah looked encouraging, or not discouraging, at least. "Logically, that's the whole idea."

"Great!" Abruptly Todd found himself staring at the wall. This was because Dirk had suddenly thrown himself to the floor and was staring intently at a candy wrapper. "Found one!"

"That's just trash, Dirk."

Dirk rolled his eyes – not that Todd could actually see that, but whenever Dirk rolled his eyes he tended to roll his whole head, as if he didn't realise he wasn't actually equipped with those plastic googly eyes little kids stuck on everything to give Todd nightmares. "It might look like trash to you, Todd, but a clue can be – "

"No, he's right," Farah said. "That's just a wrapper somebody left here."

"Which is a _clue_."

"Maybe?" Farah looked at Todd as if he could somehow stop Dirk being Dirk for five seconds. "But this isn't that sort of case, Dirk. There are prescribed solutions, we just have to find them, and – " she continued in a louder voice as Dirk sat back and opened his mouth " – they'll be something actually attached to the room. Like, um," she flicked her eyes around the room, hands on her hips in the way which Todd used to think showed her innate authority and badassness but now recognised as not being sure what to do with her hands, "like, that bookcase? That's part of the room. There could be a clue there. Or," a hand came free, waving vaguely, "there's two clocks, so that could be a thing? You get it?"

Dirk's brow was deeply furrowed. Much deeper and you'd be able to sow your crops. "So what you're saying," he said slowly, "is that there are...limits?"

Farah tilted her head. "That's one way of putting it?"

In practice, it looked like Dirk was less enthused and more disappointed by this. "It can't be just anything in here?"

"Well, that's the deduction part!" There were few things more terrifying than Farah trying to be enthusiastic – or rather there were things more _horrifying_, and it was a perfect and devastating example of the difference between those two. "Which – you said that was what you wanted?"

Dirk nodded slowly. "And...this is what's supposed to happen?"

Feeling that vague prod that he should be helping, Todd pointed out, "It's like those trap rooms with Patrick Spring. You sort of work out which is the...important thing. Of all the...things." One of these days, Todd would actually come up with a more intelligent way of saying this stuff. It was just that, well, when it came to Dirk's weirdness, 'thing' was basically the only word that even came close to conveying anything. No wonder Dirk sometimes talked like he'd swallowed one of those combo dictionary-thesauruses (thesauri? Todd couldn't even process that word in his head).

"That's it?" Dirk pouted. His jacket wiggled and then he was abruptly jacket-less and holding a pink teddy bear with a fixed grin. "Ah, didn't mean to worry you, Mona." He patted her on her cotton-candy-scented head. "Yes, just taking some time, adjusting, you know." He hesitated. "If we don't get the answer on our first try...?"

"Nothing happens," Todd promised.

"Oh."

Dirk seemed to need some time to process this, so Todd turned to Farah. "What do we do?"

Farah seemed to suddenly realise that he was there, a person with questions and not just another frustrating part of the room (he hoped). "You're asking me?"

"Um. Yes?" Not that Todd thought that Farah was trying to trick him, but, well, there was a lot of oddness going around. "I mean, isn't this your kind of thing? Maybe if you could show us how you..." He trailed off as Farah lifted her thumbnail to her mouth, then jerked it away. "I kind of assumed you'd know what to do."

"I don't just know everything, Todd."

That was technically true. Todd had heard her attempt to flirt over the phone. It had given him actual stomach pains. "But this sort of thing? Applied situation...things?"

Farah sighed. "This is – If there was a zombie outbreak, Todd, they would not run things like this."

"Okay." That was possibly more comforting than she'd intended. Todd liked the idea that humankind's only hope wouldn't lie somewhere declaring 'ZOMBIE DISEASE CENTER' in dayglo paint, or in fact anywhere this obsessed with blacklights. He wasn't sure if this was supposed to be a science lab or a repurposed rave. 

"I mean, where are the actual computers?" Farah waved her hands at the three monitors on the third table which looked like they'd been stolen from the set of _Alien_. "Where are the records? Where's the research into past diseases? All we've got is _that_." She pointed at a framed print out next to the door declaring 'FOUR KEYS, 1 CURE, INSERT BELOW' with a scribbled arrow pointing sideways. "Which, really? They couldn't put it over the door? And why would a cure open a door anyway? Why would you lock your researchers away from the bathroom? Where are the camera feeds of quarantined subjects? How are we supposed to get any data in this light? Why is there a rotary phone?" With every question her voices got a little more strained, a little bit higher, as her right hand seemed to gain a mind of its own and started tugging and gesturing at everything it could reach.

Late as ever, Todd realised he should maybe be trying to help. "I don't think they're going for accuracy in government disease protocols? Like, nobody's actually planned for zombies, that'd be like having an alien invasion – ” He stopped. Farah was looking at him, less panicked now and distinctly more patronising. "There's a zombie protocol, isn't there."

"I'm not in the government, Todd."

"So it's not even a good one."

"Probably not."

They both sighed. Todd liked to think his had more feeling, even if Farah's was heavier.

"You really don't know where to look?" 

"It's – This isn't logical, Todd. I know how _I_ would look for a cure but I don't see any of the right equipment here. I'm fairly certain that microscope is a flashlight." She pointed at the table he was leaning against, or, more specifically, at a bright pink but rather small microscope which said, in more official lettering than anything else in that room, ‘batteries required’.

Todd had given up smoking a while ago, about when it turned out it could trigger one of Amanda’s attacks (not that that stopped her). Right now, he really wished he hadn’t. "Do you think that's a clue?"

"Only about their budget."

Dirk's head popped up from the other side of the table. This was only surprising because it meant Todd realised he'd forgotten to keep track of where Dirk was, which was usually the first mistake he made before things started Happening. "Someone's drawn some science on here."

Farah would definitely deny having a voice which she used for small children, mostly because on the one occasion when Todd had seen her around small children she hadn't so much spoken as gone very quiet and looked like she wanted to scream. (It said a lot when _Todd_, no, when _Dirk_ was better in a social situation than you.) However, Todd was fairly certain that she was developing a voice for Dirk which did a lot of the same things, at least when it came to trying not to sound like you were expecting everything to be on fire. Which, to be fair, wasn't usually the case with Dirk (unlike Amanda at any age). Fire was a little too normal for him. "Okay, Dirk, that's...good?"

Dirk beamed. This was not indicative of anything, really, it just meant Dirk wasn't actively panicking at this moment in time. (Todd would like to think the constant beaming had something to do with him, but no, Dirk was just made of sunshine that way. It would be like someone taking credit for Todd scowling.) "Well, there are actually quite a lot of drawings, including some frankly rather rude ones which also aren't that accurate, so I would classify them as separate from the science." He paused. "Also, those are in crayon."

"That does sound less official," Farah said encouragingly. Dirk looked rather disappointed to have such mundanity confirmed. (Which, God, Todd was even starting to think like how Dirk spoke. That was too much British for anyone.)

Meanwhile, Todd had crouched down next to Dirk and was squinting to try to make out anything at all. Blacklighting really wasn't meant for fine detail. That's why you had it in clubs, and Disneyworld. "So that's a – is that a smiley face? Is that a clue?"

"A rather positive one," Dirk said with noticeable joy. Apparently even if it was pretty boring, he was appreciating seeing a smile unaccompanied by a knife (or hands).

"That's the Mandarin for fire," Farah said from Dirk's other side, finger hovering a fraction of an inch away from the surface of the plastic, presumably because she didn't have any gloves to hand. Todd didn't blame her – he was trying very hard himself not to notice the other things which blacklighting was very good at revealing. Zombie plagues had never been a thing for him but he was trying to get out of the habit of judging people (although, seriously, just think about the smell). "That one there's the astrological symbol for Libra; that's an old Christian symbol; I think that's – " she tilted her head " – that one's Starbucks."

Dirk hummed. "Can we go back after this? I want another Unicorn Frappuccino Glitter – "

"No." Todd and Farah both shook their heads. Dirk assumed the traditional position for sulking, until his cuddly bear turned into a cuddly coffee travel cup. He squeezed it gratefully, and Mona let out a wheezing plastic squeak.

"I don't get it," Farah muttered. "These don't have anything to do with each other – and I know I say that a lot," she added quickly, "but in this case you cannot say it is the universe, this place was devised by a _human being_, and they've just Googled symbols."

"Probably," Todd said. He hadn't been in this room all that long (according to the digital clock on the wall, although really he sympathised with the analogue one which just hung there in unmoving resignation), yet he felt like he already Got the people who'd designed this place. The universe was vast and unknowable, full of insane danger. This? This was just humans. Bored humans.

Dirk tapped one symbol, curved and pointed at the same time. It looked too familiar to Todd – not as in he could tell you what it actually meant this time, more that he could name at least a hundred albums covers and band t-shirts and movie posters and bad tattoos which featured it. It was one of those rare occasions where Todd found himself in possession of _too much_ information. Maybe this was how Dirk felt when he knew that he'd seen all the clues, just they were mixed up 'in all that useless life stuff' (genuine quote which Todd had really _felt_ when they'd been drunk enough for Dirk to get ranting). "I know this one," Dirk announced, full of puffed up grandeur. "Blackwing, very big on the whole symbols gallery, only this one I kept seeing even Outside." One of these days Todd would figure out how Dirk did that Capital Letter thing. Whenever Todd tried it just sounded like yelling.

"Biohazard," Farah murmured. "That would make sense." She looked around them. "If this was a real lab, you'd see that everywhere. Hazardous waste, infectious diseases - not, you know, _that_." And she pointed at the red circle on the wall by the bookcase, which had helpfully put not only a red line through a shambling stick figure with gaps in its arms and legs but also clarified underneath 'NO ZOMBIES'.

"I mean," Todd said, aiming for levity and tripping and plummeting helplessly into lame, "I would hope there aren't any zombies in here."

It wasn't very often you got both Dirk and Farah looking unimpressed by something. The things which did and didn't impress them varied so greatly that Todd supposed he should feel flattered that he could get them to agree on this. Then again, that would require Todd's ego to be flattered by an insult, and while it was pretty battered and bruised these days, it could still muster a small fist to shake in protest.

As it was, Todd’s ego grumbled and Todd’s body responded by carefully extricating him from the huddle. “I’m just going to… You know, you guys have got this.”

“Have we really?” Dirk asked, looking very excited by this revelation.

“Sure, why not,” Farah muttered, starting to trace various shapes linking all the symbols, hampered only a little by Dirk loudly guessing at what they might be. It was sort of like watching the Da Vinci Code mixed with Charades, two things Todd absolutely hated beyond all reason, and it was both a really good and really bad sign that his main emotion was more a warm indulgence than wanting to scoop out his own head. (Possibly not a great choice of words given the zombies, but then they weren’t real zombies, because so far brain-eating zombies remained Not A Thing, or at least not a thing the universe had thrown at them yet.)

Embracing his standard status as the agency’s third wheel (‘embracing’ in this context meaning ‘accepting under great sufferance and no small amount of sulking’, sometimes you just had to wean yourself off being an asshole gradually, like with quitting smoking or meaningless sex with strangers), Todd drifted over to the bookcase. In keeping with the aesthetic, it was making an attempt at the theme while also being very lame and cheap in the process. Even in this shitty lighting Todd could recognise the overcolored and unloved rectangles of school science textbooks, along with a lot of ‘My First’s which looked like they came from the same range as the map on the wall. The faded hardbacks mixed in with them looked intriguing, until he picked one up and found it was some sort of cookery book from the turn of the century. Another one turned out to be a driver’s ed textbook from about the ‘90s; a third an extremely waterstained edition of _50 Shades of Gray_, which he almost dropped on instinct. He guessed there was a thrift store somewhere around here with its own bored teenager who’d pointed the interior decorators to the cheapest section and handed back change from a twenty.

Behind him, Dirk made another comment about Blackwing insignias. Todd didn’t know a whole lot about those, save for that one time with the enhanced moths when he’d seen the tattoo on Dirk’s chest. It was about as much as he ever wanted to know about them. (He also kind of resented that his chance at seeing Dirk fully shirtless had been interrupted by it, Blackwing once again the biggest cockblockers he’d ever met/run away screaming from.) When he looked around, though, Farah seemed to be handling it, or Dirk wasn’t talking at a million miles an hour, which was about the same thing. This should have been good, but instead Todd felt his third wheel status dig a little deeper under his skin.

Down from eye level, he snorted as the bookcase gave up on trying to pretend at science and just featured the sort of spread of zombie ‘literature’ he’d expect from more than a few of his college lays. Yup, there was _World War Z_, and some Guillermo del Toro, and wow, a bunch of odd-numbered _ Walking Dead_ graphic novels, they really had stopped trying. Morbidly, he wondered if this had been an ex’s stuff or if someone had died. Both were possible, he supposed.

Something was awkwardly shoved in the middle of the graphic novels(between volumes 12 and 7). Frowning, he grabbed hold and tugged it out. And this time he laughed out loud.

“What is it?” Farah asked in the weary tone of someone who could really use a reason to laugh right now.

Todd held it up for her to see. “You really weren’t kidding about the official protocol,” he said, pointing at the title on the comic, _Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic_. “CDC and everything.”

Farah started to say a few things, before settling on, “Where did you even find that?”

He jerked a thumb behind him. “Bookcase.”

She closed her eyes. “Of course. Of course there are comics in the official disease research center. Why wouldn’t there be? What was I thinking?”

“Anything useful?” Dirk asked.

Todd blinked at him. “I – It’s just a comic, Dirk, I – ” He flicked through it, hoping to find some image that would at least give him something to mock. This really wasn’t the best light for it – for looking at anything, really – so all he could really make out was something to do with a dog and a checklist at the back. Then he stopped. “Farah?” He slowly turned it around and held it open. “I think I found something.”

There, on the page, in glowing pen, someone had drawn the biohazard sign.

Dirk looked elated; Farah decidedly less so. Her eyes fell shut. “Are you kidding me.”

“_Excellent_ sleuthing, Todd!”

Todd did not grin, because honestly, he was with Farah on this one. That said, he’d be lying quite a lot if he said that Dirk saying that, while looking at him like _that_, didn’t make his stomach do some very odd bubbly things. Kind of like he’d eaten a whole lot of sherbet at once and then downed a whole bottle of Coke. 

He was still distracted by the memory of a ten-year-old Amanda chanting DOWN IT DOWN IT when the comic disappeared from his hand. Refocusing, he realised that Dirk was now holding it about half an inch away from his face. “So what does it mean?”

“I’m still trying to work out how we were supposed to find that,” Farah muttered. 

“Does it matter?” Todd asked. “We found it, isn’t that enough?”

Farah didn’t reply verbally. She did, however, make a sound deep in her throat which sounded incredibly painful and also left Todd with the very strong impression that he should never even think that question again.

“So what do we do with it?” Dirk asked, not illogically. “Oh! Do we put them together? Do we tear out the page? Do we – ”

“Don’t tear it out,” Farah said. “I hate this place enough without them threatening damages.”

“But aren’t we supposed to?”

She sighed. “Okay, if we try to think about this… Whatever we’re looking for, it’s got to be something they can easily reset, right? Unless that page is easily glued back in, I don’t see tearing it out as anything practical.”

“I don’t know that anything here is practical,” Todd said.

“It’s – it’s a sort of practical.” It was impressive how Farah could still get words out when grinding her teeth that much. Seriously, whoever her dentist was, they must be very rich. (Unless Farah was her own badass dentist, which would be ridiculous to think about literally anyone else but with Farah just somehow translated into the image of her bedecked in leather and sunglasses and holding a small mirror up to her teeth and wow Todd really needed to get laid, like, as soon as they got out of here.)

Dirk carefully laid the comic open on a lime green lectern which had, until very very recently, been a squeaky coffee cup. “So, we have a _clue_,” he said with reverence. “And from this we can then deduce…” He trailed off, his face crumpling like paper. “What can we deduce?”

“That I want to kill everyone involved in this place.”

“Okay, Farah, that’s – I’m loving the enthusiasm, obviously, but I don’t see how that will help us.”

“I guess if they’re dead we never have to deal with them again?” Todd suggested. “It’s a bit like winning.” Dirk did that thing with his face where he looked very disappointed in every individual facet of life. Todd wilted in the face of such a tactic. “I guess we should try to solve the room first?”

\---

Not for the first time, Todd wondered why they still had the countdown clock when they were trapped in here until they solved this mess. He also wondered, also not for the first time, why they had ever thought that was a good idea. 

Dirk, after a while of throwing himself with his usual enthusiasm at every object in the room, was now lying contorted in a not-at-all concerning body outline by the alleged exit and making various noises to convey his utter boredom with everything. Farah was in the process of taking out every book and graphic novel off the bookcase and flicking through every page in search of that symbol, or just anything really, and then again using the microscope flashlight in case that did anything. Apparently the sheer illogic of it all was getting to her, even more than the universe’s idea of logical progression. Todd supposed he could sympathise with that. The unfair thing about the universe was that whatever it did, you just had to sort of roll with it, whereas here they knew perfectly well that humans were just dumb and dicks.

Also not for the first time, Todd found himself fairly jealous of Mona. A lot of the time this was mostly to do with how she could just hug Dirk whenever she wanted, promptingthat petty teenaged crush variety of jealousy which made Todd want to die; other times, though, she just had this lovely happy acceptance of everything which would make Todd want to kill her if she wasn’t so innocently happy. In this case, rather than seeming bored or murderous, she’d turned into one of those drinking bird toys and was tapping at the keyboard of one of the 1970s computers. Farah had tried any number of processes on them, but all she’d managed to achieve was to open Snake (how, Todd wasn’t sure, and he was way too afraid to ask) and now Mona seemed to be the only one having fun.

“Hey, losers,” their nemesis, the nefarious Becky, drawled over the intercom. “Hate to bother you but you suck at this.”

Todd gave the ceiling the finger.

“You want me to just let you out?”

“_No_,” Farah said, with the kind of force she usually reserved for taking on a small to middle-sized army.

Todd shrugged. “I mean we could – ”

Dirk’s head popped up from behind the computers. “No, we are going to solve this.”

“Dirk, I literally thought you’d fallen asleep.”

“Just,” Dirk raised his eyebrows in the same way most people would just raise their hands, “trying to catch the case off guard.”

“It’s not a case,” Farah said. “This is the work of a madman.”

“No, that would be better,” Todd said. “We’ve dealt with madmen.” When Farah just glared at him, he added, “Are you sure you don’t want me to help?” and then promptly fought the urge to hit the floor as that glare intensified.

“Is it just me or has time stopped?” Dirk asked.

Todd sighed. “Dirk, I told you, that clock just says that. It’s broken.”

“Bit odd, having a broken clock in here. Is it a metaphor?”

“For what I’m going to do to their faces,” Farah growled.

“No, wait,” Todd said, something prodding at him. “Something has to be a clue in here, right? I mean,” he went on, when Farah looked like she was considering throwing something at one or both of the clocks, “yeah, the biohazard thing was weird, but that was still on the table. The clock’s the most obvious thing in here so maybe it’s actually a thing.”

“You can’t just keep saying the word ‘thing’ like that makes it magic.”

Todd didn’t quite remind Farah that they were in the presence of someone who said ‘thing’ like it was the holiest word in the universe. That felt a little rude. Fortunately, Dirk chose that moment to rise up from the outline like an actual zombie, point at the clock, and give them a demonstration. “It’s a Thing.”

Vindicated, Todd pointed at Dirk. Farah rolled her eyes but did at least abandon the book graveyard she was building to come stand alongside Todd and direct her glare at the clock for a change. “Okay, so… It’s a fixed time.”

Todd nodded. “So what would that mean?”

Dirk came to stand on Todd’s other side. “Is it when the zombies started?”

“There wouldn’t be a time,” Farah told him. “It’s a disease, they don’t keep appointments.”

“Seems rude,” Dirk said. He shifted on the spot. “Is it when our lunch is?”

Todd frowned. “We had lunch before coming here, Dirk.” He was fairly certain there was still a damp patch on his jeans from trying to get rid of the cheese stain. Seriously, people with hot cheese shouldn’t gesture that much. That would actually be a useful warning to put around.

“But not necessarily _this_ us, Todd,” Dirk said, as if this was an extremely clever breakthrough. “Maybe us-as-super-zombie-scientists haven’t had lunch yet.”

“Is this your way of saying that you’re hungry?”

“Maybe a bit.”

In an extremely wise move, Farah had ignored the two of them completely. “So we have two numbers,” she said, tapping a finger against her crossed arm. “What else in here might need numbers?”

Dirk and Todd looked at each other – not in judgement, more one of those mutual ‘oh God I don’t know this do you know this’ exchanges they kept falling into. For once, they felt a little less unfair than usual. At least Todd didn’t think the universe had already given Dirk some extra help. 

With an exclamation, Farah suddenly strode over to the phone and picked up the receiver. “The number written on here is two numbers short!” she said in triumph, before her face fell. “Wait, but that’s three numbers.” She looked at the clock, at them, back at the clock, down at the phone, then murmured, “Wait a moment,” and started spinning the dial. Todd and Dirk exchanged glances again, this time of their much preferred variety of ‘oh good Farah will save us all’. This sentiment only intensified when Farah let out a surprised laugh. “Morse code!”

“I would just like to point out,” Dirk whispered to Todd, his breath warm and ticklish against his ear, “that I always explain what’s going on.”

“You barely ever know that,” Todd couldn’t help pointing out.

“But when I _do_, I tell people.” No arguing with that. Todd hadn’t realised before that you could have a kink for the dining room reveal cliché, but suffice to say that last time there’d been an Agatha Christie on TV he’d had to excuse himself and deal with some extremely unexpected thoughts about David Suchet. “This is just rude.”

“Next time you go running off,” Todd said, “I’m reminding you you said that.”

Whatever incredibly witty rejoinder Dirk was going to come up with, Todd would never know, because at that moment Farah turned around with excitement and announced, “42!”

Without hesitating, Dirk gave her both thumbs up. “42!” he agreed. Then he carefully leaned slightly to the side, not losing the thumbs up or the grin which accompanied them, and asked Todd out of the corner of his mouth, “Is that good?”

“She looks happy,” Todd said. “Like she’s not going to murder anybody.”

“Yes, I thought that was a positive thing.”

Farah pointed at the clock. “It’s not the numbers, it’s the hands,” she said, as if that made any sense. As a professional (if they ever got paid) not-a-Watson, Todd wasn’t sure Farah could pull off the revelatory non-sequiturs with the same flair as Dirk. (Although that wasn’t really Farah’s fault, since Dirk had enough flair for a whole state, even Texas.) “Those are the positions on the dial. So you put in the number on the phone, plus two and eight,” Todd put a line through his next question, “and then you get the morse code for 42!”

“I – ” Todd swallowed hard. “That’s – you know morse code?” Immediately he wanted to swallow his own tongue, frantically looking at the ceiling to avoid Farah’s expression. “I mean, that’s really impressive, Farah. Isn’t it, Dirk?”

“Hmm,” Dirk said, which wasn’t exactly the outpouring of praise Todd had been expecting. “Good delivery, about a seven out of ten, maybe.”

Todd blinked. “Are you rating how she revealed the answer?”

“It’s an important technique, Todd.”

“But she got the answer!”

“Ah, yes,” Dirk said, face lightening, “and obviously that’s _excellent_. Well done, Farah!”

Farah smiled, and even though you couldn’t really tell in this lighting, Todd recognised her version of bashful. He’d seen Tina praising her enough. “Well, it was really – “

“Oh thank fuck,” the speaker interrupted. “How fucking long did that take you?”

That precious small smile froze. “I can’t promise I’m not going to break that thing before we leave.”

“No objections here,” Dirk said firmly, Todd shaking his head like a bobble head.

\---

The three of them were sat staring at each other, the only sound the regular 'tap tap' of Mona continuing to have the only fun in this nightmare.

"You know we could have gone paintballing?" Todd said, staring up at the ceiling and not thinking about what that highlighted stain was or how it got up there. "That's like what we do anyway, just...useful."

"I would kill you both in seconds," Farah said, with surprising honesty. Usually she'd come with an excuse why they wouldn't be dead – Todd assumed more to reassure them, unless it was like an anxiety thing. 

"At least then I'd get to hold a gun."

"I've seen you hold a gun, Todd." Farah paused, squinted slightly, presumably not just from the shitty lighting (the moment they got out of here one open bulb was going to burn their eyes out). "Actually, you could use the practice. Remind me to take you to the range after we get out of here."

Dirk perked up. "Can I come?"

"No."

Dirk wilting had the extremely annoying and extremely predictable effect of making Todd suggest all sorts of stupid ideas just to make him smile again. "Come on, it probably wouldn't hurt for him to try?"

"Hurt whom, exactly, Todd?" Farah raised her eyebrows.

"Er," Todd said wisely, before even more wisely...ly deciding just to get out of this conversation while he still could. "So what do you think is the deal with the lights in here?"

"Do you know, I've been wondering about that too," Dirk said, leaning forwards as Farah's head twitched at the subject change. Todd really shouldn't keep doing that to her. "It's all very _atmospheric_, and you know I'm all up for that, very committed to the whole _theme_ of the thing, top marks, but it's not the best conditions for fine detail, and Todd, I hate to tell you this, but your teeth are quite alarming like this."

Todd clapped a hand over his mouth. "No they're not," he said through his fingers.

"They're pretty noticeable," Farah told him.

"So are yours." It was an instinctive thing, but Todd still felt bad when Farah visibly shrank back and pressed her lips tightly together. "I mean. They're probably not as bad? Or good," he added, trying to work out whether it was actually better to suggest Farah had managed to acquire bad teeth somehow, given that, oh yeah, she used to work for an actual million/billion/more-money-than-Todd-would-ever-see-iaire. Best to abort. "Why are we talking about teeth, anyway? Aren't we supposed to be looking for a key?" He frowned, trying to think what they even had. "Or, a number?" He contorted his body, loathe to get up off the floor so seeing if he could remind himself of the sign by the exit by making his body into a representation of the letter Z.

"_That_ says 'keys'," Farah said, just as his spine started to make very noticeable warning twinges. "But so far all we have are a comic book page and a number. We're not even sure what we're looking for."

"Forgive me if I'm wrong," Dirk said, gaining both of their attention if only because of the sheer unlikelihood of Dirk actually meaning that phrase, "I’m not very familiar with how this goes for you 'normal people'," Todd was extremely offended by those exaggerated finger quotes, then offended by his own brain for being offended by that, "but given that most people don't have a – what did you call it, Todd?"

Todd performed an elaborate mental flail before Occam's Razor kicked in. "Your...innate connection with the universe?"

"Yes, that. Well, I realise I'm not an expert, but don't the vast majority of people require...instructions?" He looked around, eyebrows raised expectantly. Expectant of what, Todd had no idea. Optimism was one of the many things other people (Dirk) could do and Todd just sort of stood there and let them get on with it (these days, he'd figured launching into cool cynical speeches might count as an asshole-ish thing). "Just, it seems to me that this is a very odd way of doing things, and yes I am saying that as someone who is me."

It wasn't that Todd didn't think Dirk had a point. It was just that frankly he had no idea what difference it made. "Honestly, I wouldn't put it past that girl on the desk to hide them."

"That seems unnecessarily mean."

"She's sixteen."

Dirk smiled at him in that polite way which generally meant that once again Todd had come up against the vast wall of Dirk's inexperience with any semblance of normality. Come to think of it, at sixteen Dirk was probably roaming the wilderness with Mona, trying to work out a clothing option that wasn't 'jumpsuits'. Which was a really distressing thought and made Todd want to punch things, only everybody was doing a great job freaking out so far and punching things had way too much potential for setting off either Dirk or Farah or possibly both.

Being of a way more proactive mind than Todd or a non-universe-yanked Dirk, Farah had started rifling through the papers on the desk. "There has to be something in here, he's right, there can't be _nothing_."

"Farah, you already looked there," Todd said, slowly rising to his feet and trying to keep both his body and his voice non-threatening. It wasn't an instinct which came easily to him at all. "You said there was nothing."

"That's because there is nothing," Farah said, a touch of hysterics twisting her voice higher than it really should be. "Look, you've got some flavour text I'm fairly certain is from a video game - " she thrust it at Todd, who was suddenly strongly reminded of his crush on Jill Valentine " - and then it's just that repeated for five pages, then absolute _nonsense_, like they, they just made a cat walk on a keyboard, this page is just _blank_ – " She cut herself off, taking a step back and pressing the heels of both hands to her forehead. "Oh my God. This is how it happens."

Asking what 'it' was seemed like a great way to speed 'it' along, so Todd smacked a hand over Dirk's mouth without looking. "Farah. It's okay."

He didn't think he deserved the look Farah gave him then. Not unless you counted, like, karma. "It's really not, Todd." She waved the blank piece of paper at him. "It's really, really not."

A loud yelp alerted both of them to the fact that Dirk had been left unattended and was starting to fiddle with the microscope flashlight, which didn’t bode well but did mean they could move on from Farah’s freakout and to whatever Dirk had managed to do to himself by trying to use it as an actual microscope and thus holding a light right up to his eye. If it hadn’t been such a shitty light, the universe might have had to contrive a cure for blindness (which opened a whole world of possibilities Todd had to slam shut again very quickly because wow talk about a slippery slope, nope, not going there). 

“Dirk, are you – ” Farah carefully extracted the offending novelty flashlight from his hand and tried again. “Are you alright?”

“Perfectly fine,” Dirk said, one hand clamped over his eye. “Bit glowy and I’m fairly certain I saw the inside of my own eyeball, world a bit red, nothing special really.”

For want of any input as to what expression could possibly convey a response to that, Farah’s face stayed fairly frozen. At least, Todd assumed that was what was going on. It had certainly happened to him enough times. “Why were you even doing that?” Todd asked.

Dirk gave one of the most excessive and defensive shrugs Todd had seen in his life. It started with the shoulders and then somehow contrived to involve most of his skeleton. A better description might be that he was endeavouring to actually spell the word ‘shrug’ in performative dance. “It – seemed like an idea? A thing to do which was a thing? These are my methods, Todd. I’m supposed to poke things.”

Technically Todd couldn’t argue with that. Of course, that sort of thing had never stopped him. “Those are cases, Dirk. The universe tells you what to poke.”

“This is a case too,” Dirk said, projecting affront like a cat. Todd would have greatly loved to build into a proper argument – he had quite a lot of frustration built up, both normal and…other varieties – but then he noticed that Dirk’s lip was sticking out just a bit too much and he gave way with quite embarrassing speed. Seriously, it was just as well Dirk wasn’t an evil genius (or either of those things on their own), he could pretty much get Todd to do anything with enough pouting and blinking.

Realising he was gaping like a particularly infatuated fish, Todd whirled around to look at Farah. “Any ideas?” he asked, registering how stupid the question was about 0.5 seconds after he started saying it but already in too deep to stop himself. Sometimes you just had to take your turn as the village idiot.

To his surprise though, Farah did not give him a withering look (as in a look which you could actually feel sucking any pride out of your skin and leaving you a husk swaying in the wind of her disregard – look, Todd used to write songs for something almost resembling ‘a living’, sometimes the old habits died hard), nor did she start slipping towards another attack. Instead she was shining the microscope on the blank paper in her hand and murmuring, “Oh my God.”

Confused, Todd leant over (absolutely not also on his tip toes) and then swore quietly. The light revealed writing on the page, _blue_ writing, the exact same shade as the blacklight turned the paper. 

‘HOME’

“Well that’s…” Todd tried to think of a word other than ‘ridiculous’ or ‘incredibly unhelpful’, “ominous?”

Farah’s finger tapped against the flashlight. “I don’t get it,” she said – not exactly growling, but not exactly not growling either.

“I’d like to go home,” Dirk said with a deep wistful sigh, more appropriate to an MGM spectacular than a shitty riddle dungeon basement. “We have tea there.”

“Really?” Todd couldn’t help smiling a bit. “You don’t want your Pretty Princess Unicorn – “

“Unicorn Frappucino Glitter Fairyland Princess Deluxe, Todd, it’s not that hard.” Dirk sighed again, putting thousands of romance heroines to shame. Todd reflected on his need for a better taste in movies. “That would be nice too, obviously.”

Todd patted him on the shoulder. It seemed the only appropriate thing to do.

Seemingly oblivious to Dirk’s dramatics (or just much better than Todd at blocking them out), Farah turned the light on the rest of the room. It did not benefit from better lighting at all – especially given that the ‘better lighting’ was still fairly shit in its own way. Changing the batteries on that thing must be a nightmare. “Okay, what would they call home?”

“The zombies?” Dirk asked. “Seems a fairly metaphysical question, maybe even theological depending on your orientation, but – ” And then he went angrily cross-eyed as Todd covered his mouth again. “Mmph mmph _mmph_ mmph,” he said.

“Shorter words, Dirk,” Todd said, partly with regret but mostly just feeling very very tired. “We’re not dealing with criminal masterminds here, or magical masterminds, or – they’re not clever people. They just think they are, and then they charge money for it. It’s really not that complicated.”

Dirk raised an eyebrow extremely pointedly and Todd withdrew. “I’m not sure I care much for your attitude, Todd. This is, after all, an employee outing, and if you’re not going to show the engagement of an assis-friend – ”

“Hey, Todd?” Farah interrupted. “What would you mean, if you wrote that?”

If in doubt, resort to the obvious. “I didn’t. I’ve literally never been here before in my life.”

“But let’s say you work here,” Farah said slowly. “Just now, you said they just think that they’re being clever.” With the inevitability of the tide, Todd could sense some kind of insult looming on the horizon. “If _you_ were trying to be clever, and you wrote that, why would you think you were being clever?”

Attempting a verbal shimmy out of the way, Todd said, “I don’t think – why would ‘why’ actually matter?”

Farah made some sort of sound with her tongue and her teeth which instantly made Todd want to shut up and stop pulling someone’s hair. (Better not to unpack that one.) “Fine, then what would you mean?”

“I,” Todd said helpfully. It really didn’t help that when he looked to Dirk for help, Dirk was staring at him with the kind of fascination he usually reserved for those about to let loose with all sorts of universal gluing revelations. It was a very flattering way to be looked at, and on the whole as a former frontman and recovering asshole Todd liked being looked at (going on the run had been quite the culture shock), but it lost a lot when he just got super flustered without any idea what he was being expected to say. This was really not his (wait for it) _thing_. “A place?” He did not squeak, because obviously he lacked the ability to squeak, being a man who did man things. 

To say that Farah looked less than impressed was to try to hold together what little dignity Todd still believed he had. “Okay, that’s – that’s something,” she said anyway, and not entirely inaccurately. Then she sighed and walked over to the large children’s map (as in a large map, not a map for large children), muttering to herself as she pointed at various locations whilst occasionally glaring at the paper as if it was responsible for a whole string of kidnappings and so help her Farah would find out everything it knew. 

“I thought that was very insightful,” Dirk told him.

Todd looked at him. “Really.” 

Dirk nodded, less slowly and more exaggeratedly, as if he was intensely aware of the whole process of movement. It was more than a little reminiscent of Todd’s occasional flashes of what exactly had gone down at the Sound of Nothing. “Very insightful, and very helpful.”

Suspiciously, Todd asked, “Are you drunk?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“You’re not making any sense.” Dirk frowned. “Wait, did you say that or did I?”

“Dirk.” Todd grabbed him by the shoulders. “We will get out of here. I promise.”

“And of course I believe you,” Dirk said, patting him on the head. 

Todd did not punch him, or even yell at him, which clearly meant he was owed a raise or seventy. Instead he just sort of pushed and manhandled until Dirk was sitting down with his back against the desk wall of symbols. “Just…stay there.”

“I’m fine,” Dirk said, which just so happened to be the one phrase in the world which Todd knew absolutely did not mean that you were fine. So that was a thing to worry about, on top of the whole trapped thing. 

He checked his phone. Nope, still no signal – and that wasn’t his phone being shitty, he’d found signal in Wendimoor before, he just didn’t have anyone to call. Shit. They really were going to have to solve this thing. It was either that or reasoning with Becky, and one of those things sounded a lot more impossible. (Alternative taglines Todd had devised for the Agency while drunk included the rather poetic ‘discover a range of impossibility’. The fact Dirk had shut it down quite so vehemently had only convinced Todd of its brilliance.)

Farah only jumped a bit when he tapped her shoulder, which was an improvement on that time when she’d almost beaten him up with a free guidebook. “Hey, um, any luck? Because I don’t know what’s going on with Dirk but it’s probably not good.”

“Why? What’s going on with Dirk?”

“He’s, um.” Todd looked back at the brains of their operation, currently listlessly tracing the Starbucks logo over and over. “He’s weird?”

Farah sighed. “Do we have to record every time that happens? Isn’t that a little reductive at this point?”

It wasn’t so much that he resented being dismissed over and over (okay, complete lie), but just for once he’d like people to acknowledge that he of all people knew that Dirk was weird and was capable of noticing changes. “Never mind. What have you tried?”

“Um.” Farah’s fingers flexed around the flashlight. “I’ve tried shining this on every significant location on the planet, I’ve tried spelling ‘HOME’, I’ve tried drawing a house, and I’m now wondering what I did so wrong in a previous life to deserve this.”

“That’s better than knowing exactly what you did in this one.” Delicately Todd took hold of the paper and tilted it towards him. Right. What would he do if he was trying to be clever. “Is there anything on Seattle?”

“Todd, I really don’t think – ”

“We’re in Seattle,” he reminded her. “Farah. Stop thinking cryptic. I think they literally just mean _here_.”

Farah looked at the map, then at the paper, then at him, then back at the map. “Remember that paintballing idea.”

“I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me in the crotch.”

“That’s against regulations.” Farah sighed. “Do they want coordinates? I can’t remember Seattle exactly – it’s definitely 47 North, 122 West, I just can’t quite get the decimal places, give me a second.”

“Farah,” Todd said gently – a tone which surprised both of them. “They’re really not that clever.” He frowned. “Also it’s probably not fair to say that unless they’ve actually got it written down somewhere. Since there’s no signal and all.”

“Did you forget about the bookcase?” Farah asked in the kind of voice that made it abundantly clear that she would never ever forget about the bookcase. Todd honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he found a dartboard in the office in the next few days with a picture of cheap easily assembled furniture pinned to it. 

"I promise I did not forget about the bookcase," Todd said, in the sort of voice people usually used to vow that they would not sin or neglect to take out the recycling when it was their turn. "I still think we missed something and got lucky, _but_ – " he quickly added when Farah looked like she might use the flashlight to somehow reach into the map and pound the whole of Seattle to a pulp and hopefully this fucking dungeon with it, " – that doesn't mean we can't figure this one out."

"Todd. This place is stupid." There was no way Todd could argue with that one. "I know Dirk wants tea; _I_ don't know if I want tea or vodka. A _lot_ of vodka."

"I didn't know you drank." That would have been useful information on the run. Todd had tried getting drunk once or twice but it was kind of boring doing that on your own when unaccompanied you lapsed into those morose states which led to, okay, a lot of song lyrics but not a lot of constructive contributions to your potential Bonnie and Clyde lifestyle. What was the point of being drunk and depressed if you didn't have drunk and depressed sex, anyway? (Oh, he heard it that time.)

"I don't," Farah said with the utmost certainty. "That's how much I hate it here."

Todd could definitely sympathise with that. Maybe that was why he looked at the map and, instead of trying to think logically, he just thought, _What would make Farah angry?_

And just like that, it was obvious.

"Grid reference."

"What?"

Todd pointed at the numbers running along the top and side of the map, dividing the world into neat blocks which a five-year-old could understand (although whether or not they wanted to was a whole other matter). "Seattle's got an easy one, it's just the block with the Space Needle in it." Really, he should just be grateful that it wasn't a giant picture of Kelsey Grammer. 

He did not feel the rush which usually came with somehow accidentally tripping and falling into a clue. Possibly it was because Farah wasn't so inclined towards effusive flattery and praise as Dirk; possibly it was because even in this moment of supposed triumph he knew he hadn't actually 'solved' anything worthwhile. Dirk unravelled complex conundrums spanning multiple dimensions; Todd could think like an absolute troll. 

Farah handed him the microscope flashlight. "That's it."

"Wait, really?" He'd sort of been hoping for some kind of fight on that one. Or, not a fight exactly, because Farah would blatantly win, but just some sort of refusal to accept the fucked up way their lives went. It said way too much when the universe was looking like the nice one.

"Todd, I'm done," she said, with a fixed smile which looked like it might shatter if you so much as looked at it wrong. "This? This is ridiculous. I can do any crossword in five minutes; I can strip any gun and reassemble it in less than that. I can't – " She caught her breath. "This isn't my thing. I can't do it."

You'd have to be some sort of monster to ignore that kind of honesty. Unfortunately, while Todd tried not to be a monster, he didn't have the slightest clue what to do. Apparently his newly discovered pep talk skills only extended to Dirk and his bullshit. "That's...not your fault?" Then, when Farah failed to seem inspired or anything other than Done, he suggested, "So what do we do with the answers?"

"I don't care, Todd. Seriously." And that made two members of the agency slumped next to the desk. Admittedly one was more filled with powerless rage and the other was slumping in a way that suggested he either needed universal motivation or sugar, but either way, Todd was feeling more than a little alone right now.

Not exactly wanting to engage with either mood, he drifted over to the last remaining member of the agency: a drinking bird. "Hey, Mona," he said. Mona tapped at the keys and the 8 bit snake ate another apple. Great, now Todd was hungry. "Do you have any ideas?" Another apple. 8-bit snakes had it so easy. In his next life, if he somehow did anything to make a dent in all of his bad karma, Todd was going to come back as an 8-bit snake. Although if there really was any sense of cosmic justice, he'd probably be controlled by a nine-year-old who hated everything but especially outdated shitty games. 

Abruptly he realised that the bird had stopped its tapping.

"Wait, really?"

It wasn't clear whether a plastic bird could shrug. Melting away and then turning into a rainbow-coloured spacehopper, however, didn't seem like a positive emotion.

"Yeah, me neither."

Out of sheer awkward despair, Todd sat on the spacehopper. It squeaked, which he could have done without, but that was awkward despair for you. He didn't really get to apply for any other kinds these days, so he took what he could get. Slumping forwards, he looked at the eternal 8-bit snake and then sighed and exited out. Tempting as it was, he figured he'd had enough of games where you were trapped in circles forever.

INPUT:

Todd considered sighing again. It seemed a bit excessive, yet necessary. God knew he'd take any kind of input right now.

INPUT:

Mona squeaked again as he moved, which was a whole lot less disturbing to him now than even a few weeks ago. Clearly nobody had tried to kill him lately. He was starting to miss it. People trying to kill you sucked, sure, but at least you had an actual person to run away from.

INPUT:

Todd really hated blinking cursors.

"Just shut up," he muttered, and entered '42'.

INDIUM

Wait. "What?"

The word sat there on the screen, staring at him. At least he assumed it was a word.

"Um, guys?"

Dirk groaned in a decidedly unhelpful manner, even for Dirk.

"Guys, I found something!"

"Does it make absolutely no sense?" Farah asked in the weary tones of the utterly Done.

"Maybe?" Todd hedged his bets. "It's a thing though! A thing that's different!" Holy shit. Holy shit, this _was_ a thing. He'd found a thing! Even Mona was bouncing under him, although that could just be the whole spacehopper experience. He stood up, though, and she kept on bouncing. "Yes! Thank you, Mona!"

"What did she do?" Farah walked up, scowling at nothing in particular. Then she caught sight of the screen. "Todd? How did you do that?"

"I put in the number!" Todd exclaimed, still a little giddy about it. "The - the 42 one, from the phone! The morse code!"

Farah stared at the screen, before striding over to the right-hand computer and typing in the grid reference from the map.

POTASSIUM

"Oh my God." She clicked her fingers, which might have been insulting to Todd (who did after all have a lot of experience as a bellboy and therefore had been clicked at more than anyone ever wanted to be – admittedly an amount already roughly equal to zero), except his threshold for annoyance in the face of an actual solution was fairly high these days thanks to extended exposure to Dirk (in a very metaphorical sense). "Where's that comic?"

'That comic' turned out to be under Dirk somehow, who was still slumped by the table. "Seriously, dude? We're finally getting somewhere. Shouldn't you be excited?"

Dirk blinked slowly up at him. "S'm'fr'm'ng," he said, doing a brilliant job of avoiding every vowel going.

Tragically, Todd still required vowels to communicate, at least with Dirk. "What?"

Dirk frowned. He tried to get up, in that he put his hands under him, straightened his arms, promptly collapsed again, reached up to grab hold of the table, slipped off, and eventually ended up sideways on the floor and thus further from being upright than before. He was also still on top of _Preparedness 101_.

"Um." Todd was not an expert in a whole lot of things. He still felt fairly certain that this did not seem normal. "Dirk?"

"S'mthing's wr'ng," Dirk informed the floor, employing the radical strategy of engaging a single vowel.

Whether it was the magic ‘I’ (as it were) which did it, or Todd's experience with any number of biological inhibitors belatedly kicking in, Todd finally got it. Also, he had eyes (the other kind). "Okay, is it the kind of wrong where we have to call an ambulance or is it a holistic thing?"

Dirk opened an eye to attempt to level a look at Todd. Given he seemed fairly out of focus, Todd decided to just pretend it had worked and started manhandling Dirk to his feet. This was much harder than it needed to be, what with Dirk having about an extra foot of useless flopping noodly height, but Todd was getting used to it. "Okay, Dirk, we just need to do this, then you can do your thing, promise."

If Todd believed he had surpassed his asshole nature, that positivity took a beating as he thought how if nothing else, maybe now the universe would give them a hand. However, this still made the universe the bigger asshole, and Todd had never been that convinced anyway.

Farah was leaning with both hands on the table, engaged in a staring context with the final and left-hand computer. She broke off though when she saw them. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Todd said, as honest as he ever was when saying that. "He's sort of ... flopped. Here," and he held out the comic, only sagging a bit under the redistribution of Dirk weight.

Farah's mouth still seemed to be forming various questions and concerned noises – none with sound, purely in potentia – yet this did not stop her from flicking through the comic to the relevant page with the biohazard symbol still gazing sadistically up at them. On closer inspection, the page turned out to be the start of Part 2 of the zombie advisory saga.

Incredibly, Farah managed to type in '2' without actually breaking the keyboard, although the number key definitely wobbled afterwards.

PHOSPHORUS

Dirk swayed against Todd, somehow not causing them both to collapse to the ground. "'re we doing science now?" Todd had been on a lot of drugs in his old life, to the point that he more than recognised their symptoms in, well, his new life. He did not, however, enjoy hearing any similarities between him and Dirk.

Farah pointed at each screen, left to right. "Phosphorus, Indium, Potassium... That's not a normal combination, if they expect us to make something. They don't have anything to do with each other."

"Pip pip," Dirk said, and giggled. As much as Todd had an enormous screaming crush on him (one which often involved literal screaming, and even running away from being crushed on occasion), he could have done without the giggling. Giggling was just way too bound up in his head with horror movies and extremely messy sex (not at the same time, usually).

"Dirk, I know it's your thing, but do you think you could be a little less British, like, for one minute so we can – "

Strictly speaking Farah did not gasp. That was far too big a word for it. She just exhaled, stronger than she would normally have to. "That's it."

"Being British?"

"Elemental symbols," she said, as if Todd hadn't said anything, which was probably for the best for their remaining collective sanity. "That doesn't spell PIP, that spells PInK!"

The collective sanity did not seem to be doing all that well. "How."

Apparently not knowing chemistry lost you another few points in the attractiveness charts, judging by Farah's slightly confused expression (a confusion which Todd, naturally, could only assume referred to how they ever slept together, something he often wondered about himself). Whatever. That was hardly new information, no matter how much practical experimentation had happened in Todd's bloodstream. "Potassium is represented by K," she said, as if that made any sense. Then, "Oh my God."

"You know why we're looking for pink?" Todd asked hopefully. Noticeably Dirk perked up too, possibly just at the mention of the colour.

"Oh, no," Farah said, looking annoyingly distracted for someone who might actually be able to get them out of here. "It's just – at the cafe, earlier. The list of ingredients that woman gave us."

"The Lucky Charms?" Todd asked.

"Not that part exactly," Farah said. "When she got onto the elements – let's see, there was – damn, I’ve got it on my phone – I know she said ruthenium and nitrogen – " She stopped. "We have to get out of here."

"Well, obviously," Dirk said, in a rare feat of beating Todd to the snarky comment, which left Todd delegated to the standard sidekick duty of pointing and nodding his agreement with the sentiment.

"No, she was saying RuN. We have to investigate!"

Dirk blinked slowly. He was very very heavy, especially for someone that gangly. "You mean like a case."

"That sounds exactly like a case, Dirk," Todd said. "Like, someone spelled out a warning in science, I don't know how else we're supposed to interpret that. This definitely sounds like our sort of thing."

"'Our sort of thing'." Dirk smiled, in a decidedly half-asleep dazed way which Todd usually associated with hospital visits _after_ the case. "Hey, Todd?" He turned his head into Todd's neck and breathed out in an incredibly distracting way, dousing hot breath over the skin of someone who tried really _really_ hard not to picture this sort of scenario (in the very immediate physical sense, without all the shitty lighting and locked rooms and Farah and Mona and general panicking). "C'n we get another Unicorn Frappalappe..." He trailed off and Todd could feel him pouting, which was once again not a helpful face thing to do in this set up. He could only hope that Farah was widening her eyes at him to indicate that they had a Dirk problem rather than the increasingly distracting Todd situation.

Call it motivation, but the penny didn't so much drop as reach terminal velocity. "Shit. You drank the stuff from there."

"Tasty."

"And probably poisoned somehow." Farah hissed sharply through her teeth. "Phosphorus, oxygen, iodine – _shit_. Okay, we'll just – let's find the pink...thing and get out of here, and then we'll deal with all...that."

An odd tinkling reached their ears. They looked around (Todd swinging wildly as he tried to compensate for wherever the fuck their centre of gravity had ended up) to see Mona, human and blinking, and holding up a test tube from the pile of science equipment Todd had just sort of dismissed as set dressing. The test tube glowed pink.

As they watched, Mona reached in and pulled out a piece of paper which positively screamed the number 5 at them. "Can we get out now?" she asked.

As much as Mona had saved them all sorts of times in all sorts of ridiculous ways, Todd couldn’t help checking all the test tubes, feeling much better when he noticed Farah doing it too, both of them leaning a little too much to the side and squinting against the luminescent colors. Definitely a paper in each one, which was a whole lot more preferable to the alternative, where say for example Dirk could have just knocked into the table and spilled out the only one there, or actually any of them could have just looked down at the right angle. Terrifying as it could be, Todd was more than willing to accept the easy way of doing things if it meant saving more time for running or, you know, not being trapped for all eternity in a former rave dungeon. (If that had to happen, he'd rather it was a current rave dungeon. Or a current rave, former dungeon. Look at him, giving the universe plenty of perfectly viable options.)

Looking on the bright pink side, Dirk had noticeably perked up, even it was still shy of his normal levels of blinding sunshine. "Very excellent work, Mona!" he said, making Mona squeak and turn into a star-covered ball which in defiance of all the laws of physics continually bounced up to his eye level. (Okay, so shape-shifting or whatever Dirk said Mona did didn't follow the laws of physics anyway. She could still be a bit less obvious about it.) Then Dirk started patting her and there was that weird double-image thing you always got when your brain tried to assume it was seeing a logical thing whilst also knowing perfectly well that the exact opposite was happening.

In the time it took for Todd to have this extended mental complaint (which wasn't all that long really, it was like the running, after enough practice you just got faster – Todd might come very close to dying a lot but you couldn't deny what it was doing for his cardio), Farah had strode over to the exit with paper held triumphantly in hand, and now seemed to have stalled. "There's nowhere to put this in."

"What?" Oh God, they were all going to die.

"There's a keyhole," Farah said in an increasingly steady voice, the sort that did not allow for normal breathing, "I can see it, but this isn't a key, it's just more numbers, so this still isn't over and I don't know - this _sign_, this _sign_ makes _no sense_," she gestured at 'INSERT BELOW', or possibly the arrow pointing to the side, "why would you do this, _why would anyone do this_ – "

She had just reached the early hyperventilating stages when Dirk joined her. With a dazed frown – the kind that usually accompanied early mornings, because despite all his bounciness it turned out that when allowed to properly sleep Dirk's entire body just shut down and then rebooted at about the speed of, well, the computers in this room, with loud annoying music and a sense that the world hadn't yet resolved into graphical clarity – mumbling to himself, Dirk reached out and _took the sign down_.

Underneath were four slots, with a button above each along with a black digital readout, currently blank. Dirk inserted the paper – no, the _card_ – into the far right slot, then pressed the button the number of times written on the card.

A loud obnoxious buzzing filled the air – less bees and more someone asleep on a game show. The digital readout read CURE FOUND, before a slot to the right spat out a key which narrowly missed hitting Dirk in the head. It pinged against the ground, bounced, knocked into Mona (through an impressive piece of timing considering she was still bouncing) and then skidded, spinning, to come to a halt about an inch away from Todd's foot.

It was the sort of ornate bullshit you found welded into necklaces on Etsy, or haunting a thousand Instagram posts. Nobody actually made keys like that to be keys. They also probably didn't tie on four ribbons, each with a letter, which from this angle spelled REUC, as if to reassure Todd that the universe still was having none of this shit. Hell, for all he knew, the universe was now in a mood and was going to punish them. Joke was on the universe in that case: everything it dished out felt like a punishment. 

Realising everybody was just staring at the key now - except Mona, who lacked the traditional design feature of eyes but had stopped bouncing - Todd sank down with a sense that gravity could curl up on your shoulders and picked it up. "So, I guess we just..." He waved the key vaguely in the air. 

Dirk blinked sleepily at him. Farah didn't move yet somehow projected the idea of washing her hands of this whole thing. 

"...Yeah," Todd settled on, walking over to the door and way too aware of his limbs in the process. That was what happened when everybody was just waiting for you to do stuff. Great for concerts, not so great for unlocking a door. "So, we're all drinking after this, right?"

Farah, who to Todd's knowledge only ever drank as a last resort, pointed out, "It sounds like we have another case." Todd pointed at Dirk. Dirk managed to not slide down the wall. "Yeah, one drink, maybe."

The lock couldn't even click satisfyingly. Just a sort of muffled apologetic clunk. There was a moment of panic when the handle didn't work, until Todd tried again, lifting and pushing the handle at the same time as cursing loudly and kicking ineffectually at the metal-painted wood, at the same time as Dirk tried leaning against him and the door at the same time, and then it gave way and deposited both of them on the floor outside.

It was probably the most dignified part of the afternoon.

\---

It was possible that Becky on the desk had greeted them, or insulted them, or done some teenaged thing that probably involved emojis. Todd was sufficiently done with everything to stop even pretending that he wasn't in his early thirties and too old for this shit.

"This is a terrible escape room," Farah announced. "You should be ashamed."

"Of what," Becky asked, still too young and too cool for punctuation. "My paycheck."

Todd either gave her a thumbs up or the finger. Possibly both, judging by the look she gave him. "Whatever, dude." Which was not cool, 'whatever' and 'dude' belonged to his and Amanda's generation. Go find your own slang, you – whippersnapper? Upstart? Fuck.

Dirk had deposited himself on the step outside, hugging a citrus-coloured sloth toy which for the most part stayed very still and did not yawn in a non-toy manner. Awkwardly Todd patted it on the head in recognition, and received another definitely-not-a-yawn in response. (He assumed it was in response. That was because it was nice to think that things and/or people reacted to you.)

"I'll go scout out the coffee shop," Farah announced.

Todd stared up at her, then sideways as Dirk slumped against him and necessitated a change in angle. "Seriously? We were just talking about drinking." 

Farah shrugged, and in that motion seemed to slough off all the slimey weight of the Team Building Day. "I need to do actually _do_ something, Todd. Something _productive_."

That probably wasn't meant as an insult. If nothing else, when Farah tried to insult someone, it involved a lot more stuttering and blushing. Knowing that didn't stop Todd's stomach twisting as he attempted to look like a professional adult. "Right. Yes. Of course."

She smiled, glancing down at Dirk, who was starting to snore lightly. Sleeping on the steps didn't seem like a great idea, but then again if it stopped more people going in there Todd was all for it. "Keep an eye on him," she said, not even flinching all that much as the sloth turned into a plastic helicopter, hovered up to her shoulder, then turned back into a sloth tightly wrapped around her arm. "We'll be back."

"Yeah, sure," Todd said vaguely, as if that wasn't badass and awesome and some kind of wet dream (which also involved a sloth now, slightly off-putting but dreams pulled that shit all the time). The awkwardness only increased as Farah pulled out her phone - which had been vibrating pretty non-stop ever since they got back into the magical world of phone signal - and walked away saying, "Yeah, Tina, we just got out – no, actually, it wasn't just me..."

Todd sighed, leaning back and just letting Dirk fully collapse across him. Fuck it. Fuck everything, to be honest. With a sense he should appreciate being alive or something, he started combing his fingers through Dirk's hair. As a comfort thing, maybe. Dirk was unconscious so it wasn't like anyone could call Todd on all this. Also, it gave Todd a weary moment to consider how he was supposed to phrase this when calling an ambulance.

"Um, like, hi?"

Of fucking course.

Todd squinted up at the man standing in front of them. He was fairly certain the guy hadn't been there a moment ago. If nothing else, he liked to think he would have noticed someone whose eyes were all blotchy like ink blots and – 

Oh shit.

"So, um, like," the guy said, shifting from side to side and pointing unhelpfully down at Dirk, or possibly Todd's crotch, but hopefully Dirk, "is he, um, is he good to go? For a – a case?"

Todd had such a bad feeling about this.

"Do I need to explain efficiency to you?"

The guy looked confused to the point of physical pain. Universal involvement or not, Todd could detect dumb bitch energy when it manifested right in front of him. “Isn’t the sea where the fish are supposed to be?”

On the plus side, Farah was going to get to shoot something after all.


End file.
